It's Not About Sex

by David Kalergis

  “God, what a sensation!” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. We were flying!”

  “You idiot!” Nora screamed at him. “You could have broken his leg! Are you crazy?” She took Mr. Constant from me and, still holding Point de Vue’s reins, led both horses away. After briefly inspecting the slight bald patch where Ray had yanked the gelding’s mane, she ran her hands along its legs.

  “Thanks for your concern,” Ray said to Nora. “I’m fine too.” Still holding both hands to his face, he took a step toward her as I retrieved his jacket, which had come untied from around his waist. “I think I have a broken nose, Ladybug. We can be twins now.”

  In fact I’d noticed again this morning before we’d begun our ride that they did look remarkably alike—tall and slender, with dark hair and a hawkish intensity around their eyes. Nora flared up at him. She was positively ferocious.

  “Don’t call me that!” she said, grabbing Woodsaw’s reins from my hand. Now she was holding all three horses. “Go!” she said. “Both of you!”

  “Nora,” I said. “Calm down. The horses are all right. Let us help you bring them to the barn.”

  “No! Don’t touch them! You and Ray stay here. Continue your little conversation behind my back, the way you started it.” She already was walking away from us.

  “I’m sorry, Nora,” I called after her.

  Ray said, “Hey, Nora, turn around. I don’t want to say this behind your back.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “What do you want?”

  “I’m nobody’s teaser pony, Ladybug.”

  Nora turned again and led the three horses away.

  “Was that necessary, Ray?” I asked when she was out of hearing range.

  “She made me mad.”

  We were standing alone in the middle of the hay field.

  “Were you mad at her or at Arnold Tingley? She hasn’t done anything wrong. In fact, she hasn’t done anything at all. Everything is happening around her—like this Harkaway business. Maybe its importance is tied up with memories of her childhood. Then Baron rapes her with his snout and she has to listen to that teaser pony nonsense from you. No wonder she’s upset.”

  Ray considered this for a moment.

  “You’re right. It’s Tingley who’s on my list.”

  “Your list for what, Ray? Are you going to shank him in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art?”

  Ray didn’t laugh or flinch or show any apparent reaction to this outrageous remark. Instead he paused for a moment, then spoke very softly and slowly.

  “I’m never, ever, going into a prison again.” He sounded quite sincere. “I need to do something about the bleeding,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Let me see your face,” I said. Nora disappeared from our sight as she made her way toward the stable, her three horses following obediently. Ray’s face and arms were covered with blood. When he moved his hands away, I saw that it was all coming from his nose. It probably was broken.”

  “I have a better idea. We can get some ice at Tamara’s. It’s closer, and she’s invited us for tea this morning, remember?”

  “Oh, my God!” Tamara cried when she saw Ray. “You poor thing! What happened?” She was dressed in her usual garb of layers of multicolored material and wore silver bell earrings that tinkled softly whenever she moved.

  “We were at the next farm,” Ray said.

  “This happened while you were visiting the new neighbors?”

  “Yeah,” said Ray. “Nora’s upset.”

  “Because of the Arabians,” I added.

  “Arabians? I thought their name was Scharpe. Come in. Let me clean you up, then I want to hear everything.”

  She led Ray into the stone cottage, her bells tinkling, and I followed. I’d never been in Tamara’s house before. She took us into the main room—actually the only room, except for the bath. Meager rays of light leaked through play-house-sized windows, illuminating a wispy plume of smoke that rose from incense burning in a bowl. From a CD player came the sounds of crickets and calling loons, the noise rising through exposed oak beams and echoing off the wooden ceiling.

  “Sit here and put your head back,” she told Ray, leading him to a low upholstered chair. The smell of the incense and the musk Tamara always wore made my eyes water. She left the room, then came back with a wet cloth and a bottle of medicine.

  “I found the arnica. We’ll clean you up first. Then I’ll get some ice.” Ray reached for the cloth, but she pushed his hand aside. “Let me do that, silly. You lie there. But first, let’s take off this shirt. It’s soaked through.”

  He lifted his arms straight up, as if he were a boy, and she helped him remove the bloody turtleneck, being especially careful as the collar went over his injured nose. Standing in the room with Ray half-naked while Tamara ministered to him made me uncomfortable, and besides, I had phone calls to make.

  “Tell me about the fight with the Arabs,” she said to Ray. “And Bradley, pull the door closed on your way out.”

  When he returned to the Quaker Cottage late that night, the sky was dark and I was sitting in our kitchen eagerly awaiting his arrival.

  “Big news, Ray,” I called.

  As he walked into the room, his face was more ashen than I’d ever seen it, and his nose was so swollen that I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was broken. I suspected it was. In Ray’s current condition, even the swelling was pale. He sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Hey, Bradley. Make me a cup of coffee?” He folded his arms across the top of the table and put his head down.

  “Sure,” I was already putting the kettle on the stove. “But where have you been all this time? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just need to rest. What’s the big news?”

  “We sold two of your paintings today.”

  His head snapped up. “Two? Is it Platz?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “I talked to him today. He called me.”

  “Which two?”

  “Like we thought. Picnic and Mother Combing Boy’s Hair.”

  “How much is he paying?”

  “Twenty thousand.”

  He jumped up out of his chair. “Twenty thousand!” he cried. “I’m getting twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Each,” I answered. “You’re going to have to start paying taxes now, Ray.”

  “You’re a genius, Bradley.” He hugged me, jubilant, and I smelled traces of musk on his clothes. “Twenty thousand dollars each!” he said again. “Is it always this simple?”

  “It’s never simple, Ray. Believe me, it wasn’t simple.”

  Patches of color were returning to his cheeks, and his nose was turning red as he sat back down.

  “Never mind the coffee,” he said. “Do we have any beer? Wine? Let’s celebrate.”

  “No. There’s no alcohol in the house. Coffee is what you need now.” The kettle soon whistled, and I fixed him a cup, black. Then I remembered having seen a bottle of brandy in the pantry, and I opened the door to find a small bottle of Remy Martin XO sitting, appropriately enough, on the top shelf.

  “We do have something to celebrate with,” I said. “Put this in your cup. I’ll join you.”

  “I owe you and Lennie a steak dinner,” he said. After spiking his coffee and taking a sip, he folded his arms on the table again and positioned his face onto them carefully, so that his nose wasn’t touching anything.

  “Do you know a good restaurant we can go to? A safe one?” he asked.

  “What do you mean by safe? They’re all safe.”

  “You know what I mean. New York has a lot of crime.”

  “You’re joking. You’re afraid of crime?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything except prison, Bradley, and I’ll avoid anything that could put me there.” He sat up straighter and took another sip.

  “If you’re worried about crime, consider this,” I said. “Twenty thousand dollars. Times two. And that’
s only the beginning.”

  Ray blew across his cup before sipping again. “That’s no misdemeanor,” he said. “That’s a fucking license to steal.”

  I tasted my coffee. The brandy felt good going down. I sat back in my chair, proud of the way I’d handled the Platz sale, and pondered my next move on Ray’s behalf. I knew that Jack Blanford was interested, and I’d been considering how to position the Tingley incident to our advantage by casting him and Maggie as participants in art-world history. Having been present at the fight could be as much a badge of insiderness as possessing a mask from Truman Capote’s famous ball. How would I let Blanford know that Platz had made the first purchases?

  I looked forward to talking the situation over with Mr. Bell when he returned from Tanzania, where he was hunting Great Kudu. Although Mr. Bell considered the Artist’s Expressions Foundation and AFTAR to be “Communist,’ he had been supportive of my involvement with Ray and Lennie, and had an unerring instinct about the motives and possible actions of other collectors. He was also a potential purchaser, although I needed to be careful about letting my dual roles—representing both him and Ray—create a conflict.

  I noticed again that Ray looked like hell. “What have you been doing for the last ten hours? Have you been with Tamara all this time?”

  “Don’t ask,” he said.

  “What’s the matter, Ray? Has she named the kids already?”

  “How did you know? First she said, ‘No strings attached.’ Those were her exact words, Bradley. A few hours later we were taking a break and she asks me if I like the name ‘Tabitha.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  He handed me his cup.

  “Will you make me a refill? I don’t want to stand up. I’ve never been so sore in my life.”

  “Well, that was a nasty fall this morning. You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself.”

  “You can say that again.” He was staring off into space.

  “So what about the name ‘Tabitha’?” I asked.

  “She wanted to know if I liked it. I told her, ‘Yeah, I like it fine. Why?’ And she says, ‘Tabitha Martin. What a beautiful name that would be.’”

  I laughed so hard I spilled coffee from the cup I was passing to him.

  He continued. “So I said to her, ‘I thought this was “no strings attached,” and she says to me, ‘I hadn’t experienced complete kundalini consciousness before.’”

  “Jeeez, Ray. What did you do to the poor girl?”

  “The poor girl? Ha!” He took a long pull on his coffee. “Ha!” he said again.

  His train of thought took a curve.

  “Hey, Bradley. I shouldn’t have given you and Nora such a hard time this morning.”

  “About what?”

  “About that teaser pony remark.”

  “Forget Tingley.”

  “You’re right.”

  He fixed a second cup of coffee and poured a stiff shot of the Remy into it. “I’m going to apologize to Nora if she’ll let me. I was an asshole when we were coming back from Eagle Hill this morning.”

  “You were.”

  “I’m real sensitive about the whole sex thing,” he said.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “So I do need to apologize?”

  “Send her some flowers tomorrow. Now go to bed.” As he got up from the table, I had an idea. “You know, I’ve just figured out how you can smooth this over with Nora.”

  “How?” He sat back down.

  “Give her a thing,” I said, “like she and Lennie have all over the house for decorations.”

  “That would be a good move, Bradley, except I’m fresh out of petrified hummingbird eggs.”

  “Next time remind me not to waste good ideas on you.”

  He sat there for a moment, considering. “A thing is a good idea,” he said finally. “In fact it’s a great idea. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll find a thing for her.”

  He got up again and moved toward the door, then came back and sat down in his chair, his face wearing a look of strained embarrassment along with the broken nose.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Have you ever heard of the seven chakras?”

  “Are they a soul band?”

  “No, nothing like that. Tamara said the idea of seven chakras comes from the Hindu religion.”

  “And?”

  “Well, these seven energy levels—chakras—are in everyone’s body, running up the spine from the anus to the skull. The energy itself is called ‘kundalini.’ Kundalini is also the name of a goddess in the shape of a snake, and she lives coiled up in the first chakra, near your anus.”

  “This sounds extremely Tamara-esque.”

  “She didn’t make it up. She showed me this book. Red Tantric Yoga: Worship of the Goddess Kundalini.”

  “Tantric yoga. Yes. I’ve heard of tantric sex; I’ve seen books, but not that title.”

  “I’d read about tantric yoga before too, but not like this. After Tamara cleaned the blood off me . . .” He interrupted himself. “But this is extremely personal. You have to promise you’ll never mention it to anyone. Okay?”

  I agreed, and he continued his story.

  “After she cleaned the blood off my face and chest, she got this Red Tantric book and showed me pictures of people with lots of arms, fucking. She said she knew ways to ‘prolong the ecstasy’ so we could reach kundalini consciousness and create a perfect being.”

  “That’s about what I’d expect from Tamara.”

  “I’d hoped this kundalini stuff might make things better for me, sex-wise, you know? That things would be different. Have you ever heard of tectonic plate theory, Bradley?”

  “Doesn’t it explain the origin of earthquakes? You’re not telling me the earth moved for you and Tamara, are you? Because if you are I’m not interested.”

  “No, no,” he said.

  He was in great distress, trying to make himself understood.

  “I read a lot,” he said. “In prison, I was painting or reading all the time. My sister used to send me books. Lots of them”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  “Yeah and a mother. They won’t talk to me anymore.”

  “But they’d send you books?” I asked.

  “My sister would, not my mother.”

  Weariness was setting in. “Ray, for the love of God, what does your sister have to do with tectonic plate theory?”

  “Nothing at all. Except she’s the one who would send me books.”

  “And what does tectonic plate theory have to do with the seven chukkas . . .”

  “Chakras . . .” he said.

  “. . . chakras, then, and tantric sex?”

  “I’ve always had a problem with my kundalini energy. Tamara says it’s unbelievable how much energy is stuck in my first chakra.”

  “Are telling me you can’t get an erection?”

  “No, no.” His face was flaming now. Since the beginning of the evening it had gone from palest white to scarlet.

  “What are you telling me?”

  “All my kundalini energy stays blocked in my first chakra.”

  It was hard to figure out what he meant, but I made a guess. “You couldn’t come when you were fucking Tamara today? Is that why you’re so upset?”

  “Not exactly.” He brought the palms of his hands down hard on the table. “I can never come. I can fuck for hours, but I can never come.”

  The bottle of brandy was sitting on the table in front of me, and I poured a straight shot into my empty cup.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he said.

  “You’ve never come?”

  “Never.”

  “No wet dreams?”

  “Not once.”

  “But you get a hard-on?”

  “That’s the easy part.”

  “So when Tamara said she knew ‘ways to prolong the ecstasy . . .’”

  “That was the least of her problems. But she took a long time f
iguring it out.”

  “And the earthquakes?”

  “Well, in this book a guy said that land masses stay almost the same for millions of years. Then the tectonic plates collide and a new mountain range comes up.”

  I took a pull straight from the little brandy bottle and passed it to Ray.

  “So what’s the connection, Professor?”

  “That maybe this is how things happen for people too. They go along more or less the same for a long time. Then their lives shift, and everything’s different.”

  “Maybe I do see,” I said. “Like your life’s going along in a certain way for years. Then your wife kicks you out of the house and you hardly ever see your daughter.”

  “Right! And it works the other way too. You’re in jail and you’re reading and painting, but mostly trying to survive, and then a man moves you to paradise. The tectonic plates have touched and shifted.”

  “So how do the seven chakras fit in, Ray?”

  “Well, if my life on the outside changed so much and so quickly—my freedom, the way people treat me, everything—I hoped that I might have changed on the inside too. That I’d be different—normal. But I’m still the same way I’ve always been inside.”

  “And you found that out with Tamara today?”

  “I’m still the same that way,” he repeated. “Inside.”

  I thought he might start to cry, but I was mistaken. He straightened up, took a pull on the bottle, and pushed it back across the table to me. It was almost empty, a quarter-inch of brandy left in the bottom.

  “Hell, Ray,” I said. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right girl yet.”

  CHAPTER IX

  ◊

  My next visit with Mary was on Monday. At the hand-off, I had tried to negotiate with Linda, whispering out of Mary’s hearing that the three of us should have Thanksgiving dinner together next week. I volunteered to get everything catered at our apartment—a turkey and all the fixings, delivered ready to eat—but she declined, saying she already had plans to take Mary to her parents’ place on the Maryland Eastern Shore. She also mentioned perhaps seeing an attorney.